Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T15:49:39.438Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beyond folk-sociology: Extending Pietraszewski's model to large-group dynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2022

Pascal Boyer Open the ORCID record for Pascal Boyer [Opens in a new window]
Pascal Boyer*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. pboyer@wustl.eduhttp://www.pascalboyer.net
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Folk-sociology is a set of intuitive assumptions that organize our spontaneous theories about society, including the notion that social groups are agent-like. Pietraszewski's model may explain this folk-sociological assumption in an elegant way. However, large-scale group dynamics include features that seem to escape agent-like descriptions. Therefore, one may want to find out whether the “event-grammar” proposed here can account for these features.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 45 , 2022 , e99
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baillargeon, R., Kotovsky, L., & Needham, A. (1995). The acquisition of physical knowledge in infancy. In Sperber, D., Premack, D., & James-Premack, A. (Eds.), Causal cognition. A multidisciplinary debate (pp. 79–115). Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Boyer, P. (2018). Minds make societies. How cognition explains the world humans create. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gilbert, M. (1989). On social facts. Routledge.Google Scholar
Hirschfeld, L. A. (2001). On a folk theory of society: Children, evolution, and mental representations of social groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 107–117. doi: 10.1207/S15327957PSPR0502_2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuran, T. (1998). Ethnic norms and their transformation through reputational cascades. Journal of Legal Studies, 27, 623–659.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Leslie, A. M., Friedman, O., & German, T. P. (2004). Core mechanisms in “theory of mind.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 529–533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukes, S. (1984). Power: A radical view. Macmillan Press.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. (1995). The construction of social reality. Free Press.Google Scholar
Sheehy, P. (2012). The reality of social groups: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Talmy, L. (1988). Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science, 12, 49–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0364-0213(88)90008-0.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tollefsen, D. P. (2015). Groups as agents. Wiley.Google Scholar